Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

Someone’s been reading my blog and emailed me with a question. (No, it wasn’t Who the [insert 24th-century equivalent] do you think you are, talking about [insert opinion] in your own blog?) I’ve immortalized the Q&A here in the blog, in case anyone else is interested.

What’s the best book to start with, reading about Miles Vorkosigan?

That’s a complicated question. The books are freestanding, but they are a series and it’s hard to say how much you miss by going out of order. Reading Memory after any of the subsequent novels gives away a significant plot point, but otherwise I don’t think skipping around is a big problem, unless you’re a spoiler-averse person. Then you’d want to go exactly in order. So, here’s the order, with recommendations and anti-recs:

LMB’s universe starts with Falling Free, a Nebula-award winning hard sci-fi novel that has nothing whatsoever to do with Miles or his family. If you’re looking for her space opera proper (Falling Free is a little too hard sci-fi for some LMB fans), then you can skip ahead to the next book in universe-chronological sequence: her first published novel, Shards of Honor. At this stage, Miles is just a gleam in his parents’ eyes, but the two books of the Miles-making period are very good (I think Barrayar won a Hugo), and they’re now available in a convenient one-volume edition called Cordelia’s Honor (Baen books, paperback).

The true Miles purist would start at the next volume, The Warrior’s Apprentice, though I believe the subsequent novel, The Vor Game, was better received. (Better received, with LMB, means it won a Hugo. Less well received means being on the final Hugo list.) Again, these two are now conveniently available in a one-volume paperback edition. I don’t recall the title - I gave the trade paperback edition of it I picked up (remaindered) to my sister to spread the addiction. You can get titles and shop on-line at LMB’s official site, www.dendarii.com. (Several e-books and some free opening chapters are available as well.)

The chronology gets a little hazy at this point - there’s Cetaganda and Ethan of Athos, neither of which I’ve read. I hear the latter doesn’t involve Miles, or at least not much. The important volume of this period is Borders of Infinity, a novella collection. One of the novellas won a Nebula award. Borders of Infinity is a good book to start with if you’re just curious about Miles and wondering whether you’re up for the full twelve-novel commitment or not.

Next up is the clone period, consisting of Brothers in Arms and Mirror Dance, in that order. The latter won a Hugo (yes, it does get tiring pointing that out after a while) and is, if I had to guess, LMB’s most popular book. It’s not very high on my personal list, but my taste is far from the norm. If you want a one-book experience, Mirror Dance is the one book to go with.

The next two novels made me believe in scifi again: Memory and Komarr. If I were going to recommend one Miles novel, it would be Memory. Komarr barely slips past it to be my personal favorite, but there’s too much Ekaterin in it for it to be representative Miles.

That brings us to present-day Miles. I read A Civil Campaign first - it’s rather comic for LMB and probably the worst place to start in the entire series. The current novel out is Diplomatic Immunity. I can’t speak for it because I haven’t read it, but I haven’t heard it’s a new favorite in the series. We’ll see how the Hugos go…

This entry was posted on Monday, June 17th, 2002 at 9:58 pm and is filed under Sci-Fi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.